Sunday, April 8, 2018

Many Russians Will Welcome Harsh Western Actions Against Oligarchs, Skobov Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, April 8 – One of the “most
popular” arguments Putin supporters in the West use against the imposition of
sanctions against the Russian oligarchs is that this will intensify
anti-Western attitudes among Russians and lead ever more of them to unite
around the Kremlin leader against the West, Oleg Skobov says.

But in fact, the Russian commentator
points out, “a significant part of Russians animated by anti-Western attitudes do
not have any warm feelings for the Putinist kleptocracy.” Moreover, their
anti-Western attitudes are in many cases the result of their judgment that the
West has allowed the oligarchs to live so well abroad (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5AC9977813369).

Consequently, Skobov continues, “if
the ruling circles of European countries decide to adopt real measures against
the Russian kleptocrats who have settled among them, this could change the
opinion of many Russians about the West to the better” and not to the West as
those opposed to sanctions routinely insist.

As ever more Europeans especially on
the left are beginning to understand, the introduction of “Russian
criminal-oligarchic capital” into Western economies “is stimulating the rebirth
of the most archaic and reactionary forms of capitalism.” And that shift means the
anti-Putin opposition should rethink its relationship to the European left.

Some Western analysts especially in
the United States have focused on the corrupting influence of Russian money on
political life; but Skobov is pointing to something even larger, the way in
which this massive influx of illegally acquired Russian wealth is corrupting
capitalism itself, dragging it back to an ugly and unregulated past.

And that in turn means, although the
Russian commentator does not mention it, that sanctions even if they hurt some Western
capitalists as they are certain to do, will not only send the right signal to the
Kremlin but make a serious contribution to the recovery of a more socially
inclined public policy in the US and Western Europe.

To the extent that comes to be
understood, liberals in the West should welcome sanctions on the Russian
oligarchs rather than oppose them and should in fact be the leading sponsors of
harsh treatment of the criminal class led by Putin under the old and still true
Polish slogan, “for your freedom and ours!”